Looking not the same as seeing: Why Kiwis are bicycle-blind

Ask just about anyone. We all have
a story to tell about the time we were driving, and
“Just didn’t see him”, whether the situation
involved another driver, pedestrian, cyclist, or
motorcyclist. This is because looking is not the same as
seeing, and no one is immune to inattentional blindness.
Drivers often fail to notice unexpected events, even ones
that are important. Critically though, we assume that we
will notice- as long as we are looking in the right
direction. We think that unexpected objects and events will
“grab” our attention. We consider ourselves careful
drivers, and that of course we would see a cyclist
because a cyclist would just “pop out” into view.
However human attention does not function in this
way.

Cognitive psychologists refer to this phenomenon as
the ‘illusion of attention’. People don’t see the
cyclist because they aren’t looking for the cyclist.
Why are Kiwis bicycle-blind? New Zealand is not a
transport-by-bicycle culture, unlike many European countries
such as Germany and the Netherlands where visually, bicycles
outnumber cars. Most New Zealand motor vehicles drivers’
brains are not intentionally malicious, or careless towards
cyclists, they just don’t see them. The Transport
Agency’s latest advertising campaign attempts to
“humanise” and “personalise” the cyclist, as if she
was a separate category of the community. She isn’t. She
most likely has a car too.

This is because New Zealand
drivers are simply not exposed to cyclists frequently,
consistently, and en masse. For example, if you are trying
to make a difficult turn across traffic, most of the
vehicles blocking your path are cars, not bicycles (or
motorcycles). To some extent then, bicycles are unexpected.

How can we fix this? Bicycle safety advocates
propose a number of solutions: Billboards and signs that
implore people to “Look for bicycles!” may in the short
term, lead drivers to adjust their expectations, and become
more likely to notice a bicycle appear soon after seeing the
sign. Yet after several minutes of not seeing any cyclists,
their visual expectations will reset, leading them again to
expect what they see most commonly- vehicles.

Encouraging
cyclists to kit themselves out in high visibility gear does
not address the core problem: Motor vehicle drivers not
seeing cyclists is caused by what psychologists term
‘inattentional blindness’. Wearing high visibility gear
will increase your visibility, for people who are looking
for you to see you. Drivers fail to see cyclists
precisely because they stand out. Reflective
clothing helps increase visibility for cyclists, but it
doesn’t override the brain’s expectations for what it
thinks it is going to see.

There is one proven way to
eliminate inattention blindness: Make the unexpected object
or event less unexpected. Only when people regularly look
for and expect cyclists will they be more likely to notice
and respond. The only way to create this expectation is to
have more cyclists around -which requires providing safe and
designated off-road cycle paths for cyclists. The only way
to make cycling safer is to make it less novel to the human
brain.

Serafin Dillon

Cyclist & motor
vehicle driver

Source: The research described above has
been adapted from the book The invisible gorilla and
other ways our intuition deceives us (2011) by Professor
Christopher Chabris and Professor Daniel Simons http://www.theinvisiblegorilla.com/

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